Re: VSO in Romance

["Raymond A. Brown" <raybrown@macline.co.uk>]

At 13:28 19/11/97, Padraic Brown wrote:
>On Wed, 19 Nov 1997, Raymond A. Brown wrote:
>
>>
>> I would dearly like to know her evidence on this.  I suppose the problem is
>> that the Romancelang I've most familiarity with is French & certainly in
>> its modern form SVO is the norm if the object is a noun or SOV if the
>> object is a pronoun.  But I must say I've not noticed a tendency to put the
>> verb first in what I have come across in the other Romance langs.
>
>I've been going through some recipies given me by the host family I lived
>with in Spain a number of years past; and I notice that nearly all the
>sentences are VSO.  In English, if I were to translate them, they would
>all be straight imperatives (but of course, they too are VSO!).  In light
>of the current discussion, I thought this was rather interesting.  Also in
>Spanish, imperative and interrogative sentences are VSO.  [I just looked
>in my Spanish refernce grammar and such indicative sentences (ie in
>recipes) are given as SVO.  Curious.  This VSO business could be dialect,
>I suppose.]
>
>decl.   Se baja el fuego a [la posicion] low.
>        V       S        O
>imper.  baja [tu] el fuego a low.
>        V    S    O
>inter.  bajaste tu el fuego a low?
>        V       S  O

The imperative & interrogative are not, I think, relevant to the verb-first
a la Celtic question.

Imperative verbs were normally placed first in Classical Latin, as they are
in the Romancelangs, in English & the other Germaniclangs &, indeed, in all
the languages I can think of at the moment.  When we give an order, the
verb is the important thing.  It must surely come in this position in
Brithenig.

As for interrogative, the common way of expressing the yes-no interrogative
in both the Germanic & Romancelangs is by _inverting_ the subject & object.
(French has developed another system with 'Est-ce que..').  Therefore, if
the normal word order in an interrogative sentence is VSO this implies that
the normal order in a straight declarative sentence is SVO.
(The Celtic langs BTW do not share this feature with the Romance & Germanic
langs.)

>I suppose the first example, by nature of having _se_ in front could be
>discounted.  I have learnt to consider it in integral part of the verb,
>as it turns _baja_ from active to passive.  Of course, in Old Spanish
>_bajase_ would be acceptable.  On the other hand, the true passive could
>be _fue bajado el fuego..._

Whether you have _se baja el fuego_ or _fue bajado el fuego_, the subject
does follow the verb & is, therefore, close to the Celtic idiom.  Tho as
you say, only the true passive _fue bajado el fuego_ is really VS, _se_ is
the grammatical object of _baja_ in the first example & we have something
like the Breton or German word order where the finite verb is placed second
in the sentence, with either the subject in from or immediately following
it if another part of the sentence preceeds the verb.

Ray.